People visit the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on Monday in Washington as President Obama is inaugurated. / Melanie Everlsey, USA TODAY

by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- A stream of visitors paraded through the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial on Monday, many of them treating the stop as a necessary pilgrimage.

Wearing hats and buttons imprinted with Obama's name or picture, carrying American flags, some said they had not made it to the first inauguration of the country's first black president and that it made sense for them to add a stop to the King site this Inauguration Day. They said Obama's election would not have been possible without the work of the late civil rights leader, who would have turned 84 on Jan. 15. The King holiday also was observed Monday.

"I just had to be here if I could," said Eva Ellis Lynch, 65, of Peoria, Ill.

Ellis Lynch and her best friend, Fern Pollard, took a bus from the Midwestern city, donned their fur coats Monday morning and snapped pictures at the 30-foot statue of King before making their way toward the U.S. Capitol. They said they had been involved in Peoria's civil rights struggles -- sitting in to integrate the lunch counter at Kresge's department store, pressing the water department and other utilities to integrate their work force -- and they wanted to come.

"I was here for the March on Washington and now its the 50th anniversary year and it coincides with inauguration," Ellis Lynch said.

Pollard, 53, said she and Ellis Lynch chuckled to themselves at much younger people on the bus they rode to Washington. Some of the young people were complaining about walking a couple of miles to see the swearing-in. They'd walked much more than that during protests, and even had walked quite a bit Monday, they said.

The friends were among thousands who passed through the first monument on the National Mall to a person of color and the first to a non-president. The crowd had been shoulder-to-shoulder on Sunday during a wreath-laying ceremony attended by Martin Luther King III, National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis, King disciple Jesse Jackson and activist Al Sharpton, who called events over the weekend and Monday an "intersection of history."

Febbie Pearsol and Kimberly Jones were among those who visited on Inauguration Day.

"I'm so proud," said Pearsol, 44. "My mother was at the March on Washington, and I was able to come to the first inauguration of the first black president, who is here because of this man," she said, gesturing to the Stone of Hope, the King site's centerpiece.

Jones said she wanted to be at the inauguration because she had to work during the last one in 2009.

"I just wanted to be here today," said Jones, 43, of Dumfries, Va. "This is really important."

King's memory has been woven through the inaugural events, which took place on the annual King holiday, observed on the third Monday of the month. Obama was sworn in holding a Bible once used by King.

On Friday, the White House released a proclamation from the president in which he seemed to connect a key idea from his first campaign, "change," with the late civil rights leader. The proclamation quoted King as saying, "Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability but comes through continuous struggle."

Saturday was the annual MLK Day of Service, also known as the National Day of Service, when Americans were urged to perform volunteer work. In Washington, volunteers crowded into the D.C. Armory to put together care kits for 100,000 service members, including wounded service members, and veterans and first responders.

At the King memorial on Monday, mother and son Patty and Mackenzie Blair, she from Clear Spring, Md., and he a student at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, strolled over after Obama took the oath of office.

"It's an interesting alignment or fate that his second inauguration would fall on the King holiday," said Patty Blair, 57.

Brian Smith, 50, of Lanham, Md., said the King memorial was the best place for him to be on Inauguration Day, reflecting on King's words inscribed around the site.